Why not all 3 options, sell a controller with a removable, rechargable battery pack & able to play with a cable in while charging, and if you remove it it leaves room for batteries instead.

I don't want to have to pay a subscription for physical disposable fuel pods for my controller, and it would be really nice if plugging it in cut down on input delay.

I was disappointed too. I have a handful of eneloops I use with my Steam Controllers, that last me a few months each charge.

For my partners Switch, we have 3 wireless controllers with rechargeable AAs as well. Meanwhile the Switch Pro Controller is dead as shit.

I get it, people want blocks of lithium around their house. But if you’re used to how good eneloops are this is a huge disappointment.

Just have replaceable Li-ion batteries.

Reading these comments, I have to say that a number of users of this community have very strong views on batteries.

Like, I would not have expected as many people to get upset as did in a discussion over batteries.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand I like the idea of AA because if the controller dies mid-session you can just swap them and keep playing, on the other this is easily solvable by having a dock like the 8BitDo Ultimate, which makes it so that the controller is always fully charged when you pick it up, so the only advantage that the AA had disappears, and it's even more comfortable to have the controller always charged than having to get up in the middle of the play session to find new batteries. And the Steam controller has a charging puck, so it should never have the issue where AA are better. So my feeling that it would be better is not justified.

The other supposed advantage is longevity, since all batteries eventually die off, if it's an external battery you just buy new ones and are done. Being internal makes it more of a hassle. But Valve has been very open with the repaiedness of their devices, so I expect this to not be a big issue, as long as the batteries are still being manufactured by the time the one in the controller dies off (which should take a lot more time to happen than regular AA).

One of the nice things with Xbox 360 controllers were the rechargeable battery packs. By default, the controllers used 2 AAs, but you could instead use a battery pack. Just remove the AA battery cover, pop in the rechargeable battery, and that's it. You could then connect a cable to the controller to recharge the battery. And, if the battery happened to be empty (or dead because of old age), you could just replace it with 2 AAs, and continue playing. Some of 8bitdo's controllers uses (or used) the same design, but they come with a rechargeable battery pack in the box.

Li-ion is fine but it should've been removable. The wireless Xbox controller was great how it let you swap the pack and keep going.